Must Read: Rediscovering American Bestsellers

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of East Anglia, UK. She is the author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (Granta 2004), and has published numerous scholarly articles and introductions. Her new book, Careless People, about F Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby will be published by Virago (UK) and Penguin (US) in early 2013. She has a monthly column on cultural criticism for the New Statesman, and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, the TLS, the New York Times Book Review, the Times, and the Telegraph. She frequently appears on television and radio, including as a regular panelist on The Review Show (BBC2). Thomas Ruys Smith is a Lecturer in American Literature and Culture in the School of American Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the author of Southern Queen: New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century (Continuum, 2011), River of Dreams: Imagining the Mississippi Before Mark Twain (Louisiana State University Press, 2007) and the editor of Blacklegs, Card Sharps and Confidence Men: Nineteenth-Century Mississippi River Gambling Stories (Louisiana State University Press, 2010). He is currently at work on an exploration of Mark Twain's relationship with the Mississippi River.

• 1. Must Read: Rediscovering American BestsellersSarah Churchwell and Thomas Ruys Smith2. Missing Numbers: The Partial History of the BestsellerSarah Garland3. The History of Charlotte Temple (1791) as an American BestsellerGideon Mailer4. 'Like Beads Strung Together': E.D.E.N. Southworth and the Aesthetics of Popular Serial FictionRachel Ihara5. Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1854) and the Visual Culture of TemperanceWilliam Gleason6. 'The Man Without a Country' (1863): Treason, Expansionism, and the History of a 'Bestselling' Short StoryHsuan Hsu7. Exhilaration and Enlightenment in the Biblical Bestseller: Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ (1880)James Russell 8. ‘Absolutely Punk': Queer Economies of Desire in Tarzan of the Apes (1912)J. Michelle Coghlan9. Ornamentalism: Desire, Disavowal and Displacement in E.M. Hull's The Sheik (1919)Sarah Garland10. Small Change? Emily Post's Etiquette (1922-2011)Grace Lees-Maffei11. Blockbuster Feminism: Peyton Place (1956) and the Uses of ScandalArdis Cameron12. Crimes and Bestsellers: Mario Puzo Path to The Godfather (1969)Evan Brier12. Master of Sentiment: The Romances of Nicholas SparksSarah Churchwell13.The Kite Runner Transnational Allegory: Anatomy of an Afghan-American BestsellerGeorgiana Banita14. The Fiction of History: The Da Vinci Code (2003) and the Virtual Public SphereStephen Mexal Contributor BiographiesIndex

"Must Read breathes new life into the study of best-sellers, rescuing them from not only the enormous condescension of posterity but also from the flattering but often reductive readings of modern academics. With its artful blend of textual analysis, historicization, and theoretical speculation, the contributors challenge us to reread and rethink a host of works, ranging from short stories and sentimental novellas to advice manuals and modern blockbusters.  For anyone with an interest in the contours of American print culture from the eighteenth century to the present, Must Read is itself a must read work." -Leon Jackson, Associate Professor of English, University of South Carolina, USA